Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something.

I'd rather attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed.

If a student takes the whole series of my folklore courses including the graduate seminars he or she should learn something about fieldwork something about bibliography something about how to carry out library research and something about how to publish that research.

It's become unfashionable to celebrate political achievement and Labour achievement even less so. And it's positively uncouth to be proud of something that this Labour government is doing. So slam me for saying so but I'm really proud of the NHS.

There's something fundamentally wrong with a system where there's been 17 years of a Tory Government and the people of Scotland have voted Socialist for 17 years. That hardly seems democratic.

My opinion is the greatest reward that any government could get is the approval of the people. If the people are happy and the people are at peace and the government has done something for them that's the greatest reward I think any government could hope for.

If you join government calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along do your best and when you have to - and you will - leave and be something else.

The public is upset. If they haven't lost their job they know somebody that has. If they haven't lost their house they know somebody that has. What do you do? When something's wrong it's government's job to fix it it must be government that's responsible for causing it.

The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest their holding too much money. We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody's afraid of the government and there's no need soft peddling it it's the truth. It is the truth.

I found the offer of a knighthood something that I couldn't possibly accept. I found it to be somehow squalid a knighthood. There's a relationship to government about knights.